Exhaustion never felt so good!! (English Camp is bannanas!!)

not sure i spelled that first word right but who cares, i have excuses. i just got back from English Camp, one of the absolute greatest parts of my year. and i feel bad that i haven't blogged in so long because in the last...2 weeks? only 2? there has been so much to blog about but so little time for it. first of all i have a big fat anouncement to make, and i'm so sorry i didn't anounce this earlier, and i'm sorry i'm not anouncing in a more interesting way (i had it planned as something really big) but here is my big fat anouncement. i am moving. this summer i'm moving from Tartu Estonia to Tallinn Estonia. this is a big deal. my whole life will change. and i have mixed emotions about it. i've known it was a possibility since the begining of december, but for different reasons have only told my most trusted people. the biggest reason is that we weren't sure until we went to finland, then we talked with the big leaders and they decided to send us. the main reason that we're being sent is that a few months ago the wittenbergs, the Tallinn corps officers, moved back to America, leaving the Tallinn corps without real officers. and so for a while our regional commanders, the Tyrells, have been in charge of both the corps and the whole region. now regional commanders and corps officer are both really hard jobs, and despite the fact that i personally think of the Tyrells as some of the greatest officers i've ever met they are only human and it's just too much work, so we are leaving our infant Tartu corps to go take over the Tallinn corps. and then a finnish officer will come take over Tartu, which is another thing i have mixed emotions about. but anyway that is just big fat anouncement i wanted to get out of the way.

now i want to tell you what today is, today is the one year anniversary of my Grandmothers death. this time last year i didn't blog much, and the little i did write was wierd and illogical. so because of what today is please pray for my whole family, especially my mom. i know she really wishes she could be back in america with family today, rather than in Estonia. and it's hard for her so please pray a lot for my mom, Evelyn Clark. i want to tell you a little bit about this time last year, i had just gotten back from english camp and after telling my parents i had had the time of my life i crashed and slept until morning. i woke up next day and found out my mom had gotten a call during the night and her mother, my grandmother, had died. this had come at a horrible time because the next day was the official opening of the Tartu corps, which was going to be a big deal, lots of people coming and all that good stuff. but with this new news my parents had to go to america and it was decided that it was best that i stay alone in estonia for three weeks and try to organize the opening with our friend Kristi's help. and so we did it, my parents left that day or the next, don't remember much, and Tartu corps officially opened, and i stood in for my parents anytime they would have been needed in the meeting. i then spent the next three weeks traveling between tartu and tallinn, living with the wittenbergs in tallinn and staying with küldar here in tartu. it was some of the most excitingly stressful three weeks of my life. and my family went to my grandmother's funeral and mourned her death in america. so anyway that's last years big story.

and now i got back from english camp, didn't get any calls in the night but we're still feeling a little upset. so yeah, pray for us. so now let me tell you about english camp. this was the first english camp i went to with friends, with me i had my friends Liis, Maret, Andrei, Karl-Gustav, and Tonis. plus a new friend named Ats. we got there at around 12:00 monday morning and after settling into our rooms had, what i concidered, a pretty good lunch at 1:00(13:00). the rooms worked out nicely with me, Andrei and Ats sharing a room. it was just one big, very stinky, guy party. so then at 2:00(14:00) we had our first main meeting, got to play some cool games and met all the leaders, some i knew from last year, some were new. it was all good. and we learned our new "english camp cheer" which went like this. Craig, our fearless leader, would point to one half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" to which that half would loudly reply "ENGLISH!!" and then who would point to the other half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" and this side would try to outdo the other in volume yelling "CAMP!!" and after doing that twice would would do a little parody of Gwen Stefani's song "hollaback girl" and say "english camp is bananas, B A ANNA ANNA ANNAS!!" and would then chomp down on a imaginary bannana at the end, which just made me hungry.

and then we went to our small groups after them main meeting and discussed what our great talker guy, Clay, had talked to us about. and i was excited to learn that despite the fact that no one i knew(except on leader) was in my group, i did have as my other group leader the girl friend of my leader from last year, which made my friend Liis (we'd met in english camp last year) very jealous. and then we had a nice 2 hours of free time, played some games, met new people, hung out with people i hadn't seen in a while (group 9 reunited, yay!!) and had all sorts of fun. and then we had dinner and after that we were challenged with "the great game!" which was a really big game. so we split into two groups, groups numbers 1-8 in the gym, and numbers 9-15 went in the main hall. all my friends were in groups 10 and up so i went with my small group (#3) and we kicked some serious butt. the game was that we had to communicate without talking, which for me was wicked hard because i love to talk. we couldn't move our mouths and we couldn't write messages on our mobile phones either, so using our hands my group communicated with the the rest of our group what numbers and letters to pick up and came in 4th the first time but 1st the second so all in all we did pretty good.

and then we switched places, 1-8 into the main hall and 9-15 into the gym and in the main hall we played a much more dificult game, we had 7 people on our team and using our 7 people in a big line we had to communicate, completely in english what a picture in one side of the building looked like so the our artist on the other side could draw it. have you ever played "telephone"? it's the same principle, it was chaos. some how some people ended up with snowmen riding horses in the desert floating in the sky, which wasn't quite right. the only thing we really got wrong in our picture was that we had some cacti the were meant to be windmills, but i mean come on, cacti? windwills? whats the difference? but we definitely didn't win that one, but we had fun anyway. so then after that we went and watched the movie "charlie and the chocolate factory" which was fun and then we played uno and phase ten until we all went up to bed and passed out at around 2:00. and i felt kind of bad because i had wanted to go to the sauna again this year but skipped it. stupid me.

then next morning i woke and bright and early to go to "mornings with matt" and non-mandatory bible study meeting in the morning which the majority of the camps christians go to in the morning. and when i woke up and was getting ready to go i accidently woke up my room mate Ats, who was, and is far is i know still isn't a christian asked me why i was getting up so early. i told him i was sneaking off with the hot redhead to make out in the snow. after we finished laughing at the absurdity of that i told him that i was going to the morning bible study and he asked me what we did there and if he could come, and of course he could so he came. and after singing some songs and a little bible study we went for lunch. me and Ats talked a little bit and he kept saying stuff like "they ask such hard questions here, it makes you think" and i told him that despite popular belief thinking is actually a very good thing. the theme of the camp was "inside out" and we were examining our lives and turning them "inside out", i personally enjoyed it quite a bit. and we then had our second main meeting with the theme of "what is in your mirror?" which was really cool. and after small groups and lunch we had free time! it was a great three hours and fifteen minutes. i played american football for the first time in a year and had my butt kicked by girls. my friend liis made two touchdowns and almost broke her nose, and we were all very proud of her. we then played dodgeball, which wasn't all that great because the balls didn't have as much air as the could have, and i'm not a very good shot anyway so i never got anyone out, except myself. and then for the last hour i played uno with all my friends, which was very enjoyable.

we then had another meeting, themed "what is behind your mask?" which i really liked because i always love to talk about this whole mask idea. we then had small groups and had a good discusion about masks, in the end we decided masks can be a good thing, its all in how you use the mask that makes it good or bad. that was an arguable point but it was were we left it for supper. after eating more nice food there came what i had been dreading all day, the dance. now dancing at english camp is great, and its not some boring dance were you spend the whole time feeling like a loser because you can't find a partner. and if you can't find a partner they find one for you, trust me there. basicly what we do is some guy named something like paul or paulo comes from tallinn and teaches us some dances. which is great because he has ok english but not perfect, and he has to teach us in english so he's going like this "now left, 1-2-7-4, and mens on the inside of circle and right 1-3-6-2" and so on. he's not really as bad as we make fun of him for but he is funny. and i enjoy because you switch partners almost every 30 seconds and so this gives me an excuse to dance with every girl in camp, which how often would it happen that girls would willing dance with me? not often but still, we had fun. that's definitely something i will look forward to next year. so we then went and watched the movie "hitch" which i personally was quite dissapointed by, it gave me no real dating tips (that i didn't already know) and it wasn't all that funny. but we watched it anyway. and then after more uno we again collapsed around 2:00, and i had again skipped the sauna, i'm horrible.

so next day i'm not going to talk about right now because i'm tired, and i'll write more later, so for now, Cya!!